X-Message-Number: 10556
From: 
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 23:01:14 EDT
Subject: Still Kicking

Thanks to all those who sent their good wishes, and for the beautiful bouquet
from Linda, Fred, Hugh, Joe, Mike, Brian and Matthew at Alcor.

As some of you know, I had an unpleasant surprise in the form of a heart
attack, which I had imagined the least of my dangers. Well, we're made of
cheap materials. Anyway, Mae drove me to the hospital and I had an angioplasty
and stent implantation, with the blockage removed from one artery. A portion
of another artery could not be helped. The net result is a limited degree of
heart damage and capacity reduction. This is not expected to affect my
activity except for the need to avoid heavy lifting etc. I am back home, on a
normal schedule, and feeling all right.

As far as the alert exercise went, there was no problem. My son David came out
here to Arizona, along with Jim Walsh, our main Detroit area funeral director,
who refreshed the local mortuary on procedures. This had been planned for the
autumn anyway. The coronary surgeon and all other hospital personnel offered
no objections whatever to our requested cooperation, and every shift was duly
informed of the requirements in case of death. (Nobody looked at my bracelet,
but I informed everyone; my regular doctor, connected to the same hospital,
already was informed.) Mae and I live only about two minutes drive from either
the hospital or the mortuary. 

During my absence of about four days, staff carried on operations. There was
another death-bed inquiry; a physician was dying, and had expressed interest
in being frozen. Andy Zawacki, David Ettinger, and James Walsh handled the
inquiry. In the end, as usually happens in such cases, nothing resulted, but
if there had been a go-ahead it would have been business as usual.

Obviously, my estimate of probable remaining life expectancy will have to be
reduced, but I'll try to help improve the odds. We will also make further and
more systematic efforts to phase me out of the routine activities of CI. CI's
future in any case looks good.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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